I’m not up for censoring language, but I’d happily ban the phrase: ‘it’s because parents don’t read with them at home’ (as a reason for underattainment of disadv pupils in reading)! It’s irrelevant. The qu remains ‘what can we do to raise attainment during the school day?’ [sic]

Judging by the number of interactions and comments, I was not alone in this sentiment.

Many leaders and teachers responded sharing their belief that this phrase could do with booking a one-way trip to Room 101! 

To be crystal clear from the outset, I am not denying there is some truth to the statement.

Raising attainment in reading

We can make the tremendously difficult job of teaching children to read, and just as importantly, to enjoy reading, a great deal easier when there is an adult at home ready and able to support, guide and enthuse.

However, we must never consider a lack of home support as a deal-breaker to securing success.

If we accept this as fact, we face a reality whereby all children who find themselves in less than advantageous circumstances are condemned to a life of poor educational outcomes. This is simply unacceptable. 

Above all else, it is the futility of the statement that bothers me (hence the addition of the tongue-in-cheek GIF accompanying the tweet: a woman rolling her eyes alongside the caption ‘moving on!’).

Lack of home support

Because, when it comes to the issue of correlating underachievement in reading with lack of home support, that’s what we need to do if we want to keep raising attainment in reading; accept the unpalatable truth that support is not forthcoming and ‘move on’!  

Although we may not wish to admit it, the unspoken, and most likely sub-conscious, message we convey when we utter these words is: ‘The problem here lies outside my control; until the problem ‘out there’ is fixed, there is nothing I can do!’

In saying so, we are effectively outsourcing the problem. And, in turn, denying ourselves the opportunity to explore practices that could lead to improved outcomes for these pupils.  

Thankfully, our understanding of how to support struggling readers has advanced considerably in the last decade or so; there is no shortage of easily accessible, low cost, evidence-informed guidance that we can access.

With this comes the opportunity to turn the lens inwards and to focus on what lies within our control; that being the reflective and progressive advancement of our own pedagogy alongside developing a rock-steady understanding of effective inclusive practices. 

Parental engagement

To return to my initial point of contention: undoubtably, having support from home brings tremendous benefit.

As such, school leaders must continue to focus on engaging all parents in their children’s learning.

This is important work.

But we should acknowledge the challenge and limitations of achieving this aim. Engaging hard-to-reach parents is time-consuming and requires heavy investment of energy and resources over a sustained period.

It also requires the collective endeavour of many stakeholders.

Change of this nature takes time and, regrettably for children at risk of falling behind, time is not on their side.

In order to do right by them, we must accept an uncomfortable truth; that despite our very best efforts, some children won’t receive that help in a timely manner. Those children should not be further disadvantaged as a result.  

Put simply, a lack of home support must never be a reason for a child failing.

Instead, where home support is absent, we should recognise this as an opportunity to harness the power we have.

In this context, the phrase in my tweet becomes less of a conversation stopper, and more of a conversation starter.

Moreover, it becomes a call to action. Those around us with the authority and reach to make a change at a societal level are working hard to leverage the bigger social challenges that may prevent parents from engaging with their children’s education. And we can take solace knowing that in our classrooms, we hold the power.

When we acknowledge that, not only are we ‘moving on’, but we are empowering ourselves to make a difference. 

Penny Slater is education development & partnership lead at HfL education.  Follow her on Twitter @mrspennyslater

The post Raising attainment in reading – Stop focusing on parental engagement appeared first on Teachwire.

They showed a range of children reading with accuracy, fluidity, appropriate intonation and expression – all of which gave us the clear impression that they were ‘getting’ what they were reading. Without the need to ask the children any questions, we could safely assume they understood the meaning of the words on the page.

This realisation was the starting point for a piece of class-based research I conducted with the Year 6 English subject leader at Reedings Junior School in Hertfordshire.

Despite most children achieving well in the 2016 reading paper, this teacher was keen to raise standards even further by supporting those pupils who were in danger of dipping just below the expected standard.

As is often the case, these children were still grappling with some decoding and comprehension issues, which meant they were mostly working on texts pitched below the standard that was age-appropriate for their year groups.

The subject leader, having experienced the 2016 tests, was well aware that if these children were not given regular access to more challenging texts, and supported to access them, they would be ill-equipped to face the rigour of the KS2 reading paper. And so a plan was hatched.

Say it like you mean it

The basis for the plan was to explore the idea that repeated re-reading aids fluency, and that fluency, in turn, aids comprehension. Ultimately, we wanted to be convinced that the children had understood a text just by listening to them reading out loud.

Our plan was simple: model how a text should be read; support the children to read it in the same way; and then expect greater understanding of the text. To help test our theory, we selected two children from Y5 who were both judged as being at risk of not meeting ARE by the end of Y6 and asked them to read a challenging text out loud. The extract chosen was from All Summer in a Day, by Ray Bradbury, which the subject leader found many of her Y6 pupils struggled fully to comprehend.

What was obvious was that neither child ‘got’ the text first time round. Yes, they paid heed to the punctuation marks (dutifully rising in pitch where they noted a question mark), and yes, they were fairly fluent in their reading in regards to decoding. But overall, their reading could have been accurately described as ‘barking at the text’. We knew this because of their answers to a series of simple questions following the initial ‘cold’ read.

Teacher: “What are they waiting for?” Child 1 and 2: “The rain to stop.” Teacher: Where is this story set? Child 1: “A planet.” Child 2: “I don’t know!”

We had intended to ask more probing, challenging questions at this point, but based on the children’s limited understanding of the text, we chose to move swiftly on.

Hearing the difference

Four more children were invited to join the group and I launched into a read aloud at full-throttle. The intention was to demonstrate how good readers pay attention to so much more than the obvious punctuation marks. Specifically, I talked with the teacher beforehand about things like how we would emphasise the verbs in the sixth sentence (pressed and peered) to alert children to the actions being undertaken. We discussed how we felt that a short sentence (in this case, consisting of only two words: It rained) required clear, bold intonation of each word, with a distinct and noticeable pause in between. And we went over how this phrase should be spoken in a way that expressed the disappointment felt by the children at this point, therefore using a lower pitch for the word ‘rained’. The point was to consider just how much meaning could be conveyed through little more than intonation.

After my first reading, I dived straight into a second, but this time I paused after each sentence (and when the sentences became very long, I paused after each phrase). I challenged the children to explain why I read each sentence/phrase in a certain way, but they found this hard to articulate. Clearly they did not have the metalanguage to describe the techniques that a good reader employs when reading aloud.

After each sentence / phrase, I encouraged the children to “read that bit just like I did”. I also invited them to repeat the section to their partner, taking turns and offering feedback.

I shared with the children how I had annotated my text to remind myself how I wanted to say certain words or phrases, and suggested that they do the same. It took about 10 minutes to work through the extract in this way.

Did it make a difference?

At this point, from our perspective, our input was done. We had modelled a meaningful read-aloud, and given the children multiple opportunities to read and re-read the text. However, at no point had we unpicked any of the language, nor had we discussed word choice, sentence structure, grammar etc – the usual stalwarts of a shared reading session.So, we wondered, would this be enough to give the greater understanding of the text?

We invited the two original children back to re-read the text aloud once again. The difference was stunning. What had been an inaccessible text was now read with all the outward signs of fluency for which we had been hoping. Most significantly, it sounded as though they were actually ‘getting’ what they were reading, much like the revered child in the DFE video. This of course we had anticipated, seeing as we had heavily modelled how to read the text during the session. The real test was whether the greater fluency had led to greater understanding. With fingers crossed, we asked the children the same questions again:

Teacher: “What are they waiting for?” Child 1: “For the rain stop and for the sun to come out.” Teacher: “Where is it set?” Child 1: “Venus” Child 2: “Venus”

Both children offered this answer without hesitation. This time, based on the level of enthusiasm we were detecting for the text, we felt we could probe with a few further, more challenging questions.

Teacher: “How do they feel about the rain?” Child 1: “They don’t like it because it ruins everything. It’s noisy.” (The child was able to locate sections from the text that supported his answer.) Child 2: “They were happy that it was going to stop. They don’t like it because it just never stops.” Teacher: “Who might the rocket men and women be?” (Both children agreed that these must be the humans who travelled there from Earth.) Teacher: “Would you like to live there?” (This question created a moment or two of quiet thinking time before Child 2 offered a response.) Child 2: “Yes.”

At this point, we wondered if the child had fully appreciated the characters’ despair at their monotonous and destructive weather conditions. Surely he could see that there would be downsides to living in a place like the one described? But he continued…

Child 2: “At first, at least. I like going outside in the rain and mucking around in puddles. But it would get boring after a while. I wouldn’t like it for long.”

How wonderful to hear the children talking with increased understanding and engagement about the text, and offering many more thoughtful insights into its meaning. Clearly, they now had a much greater appreciation – and enthusiasm – for the text. Put simply, they ‘got’ it.

Should this change the way we teach?

Here’s what penny and her y6 colleague discovered from their experiment:

Modelling works

As always, a session like this can often leave you with more questions than answers, but we concluded we had made some headway.

Specially, we felt satisfied we would be able to present these children, and others at similar stages of reading development in other year groups, with age-appropriate, challenging texts, and that with some forethought – in the form of pre-teaching consisting of modelled fluent reading – they would be able to access and enjoy them, along with their peers.

It can develop independence

In the long-term, we discussed how repeated exposure to challenging texts would hopefully attune children’s ears to the rhythms of complex language structures, making them more confident when tackling texts of this nature independently. We discussed how, moving forwards, we might be able to prompt children further in their response to questions about how we had modelled reading the text, and get them to use grammatical terminology in their answers. So, instead of saying “You paused after the word ‘look’ in line 7” they might say, “You paused before the prepositional phrase ‘at the hidden sun’”.

It will take time

Clearly this technique does not offer a quick fix, and the subject leader and I acknowledge this. Instead, it is more about the long game. However, our session made led us to believe that, on this occasion, it was a game well worth playing.

Penny Slater is deputy lead adviser for primary English at Herts for Learning, the UK’s largest schools’ company, providing school improvement and business support services to schools, academies and educational settings.

The post Teaching comprehension? then start with fluency appeared first on Teachwire.